People wearing glasses or spectacle frames prefer to try on different styles of frames. Before making purchases, test-fitting spectacle frames includes checking out the availability and styles of frames on the market, to see what would fit nicely with the facial features of a person wearing glasses/frame. In any given store where a consumer visits, only limited amount of frames can be made available to people who come in to test fit. As a result, a consumer will not have the chance to test fit some styles that are not in the stores visited.
A store, on the other hand, may lose a sale simply because it is not able to provide the opportunity for the consumer to test fit certain style or model of frames that are best suited for a consumer and is otherwise available elsewhere.
The recent development of Internet and its universal accessibility due to the popularity of personal computers in everyday households, and other sites of connectivity such as Internet Café, enable the huge growth in Internet commerce, so-called e-commerce. A huge portion of the e-commerce today actually involves the selling of lens and spectacle frames for lenses of different purposes. However, despite the accessibility of such spectacle frames over the Internet, there has not been a viable Internet test-fitting system and method for consumers to try on the wide variety of different styles to fit facial features and other individual preference before making the purchase.
Although programmers can put together software programs that can fit a facial image to a spectacle frame image, there is no functional feature to change or scale the size of the spectacle images, relative to that of a face.
Present invention differs and improves over prior art Fay U.S. Pat. No. 5,983,201 (Fay 201) in that consumers, according to Fay 201, need to have their frames fitted in a remote electronic store (RES). All the limitations associated with RES are not present in present invention, including the travel to and from consumers' place to RES and the diagnostic procedures and restrictions employed by RES.
Additionally, opticians suggest regular check-ups for eyesight, and the consequential fitting of updated prescription and frames also entails more inconvenience associated with RES as stated in Fay 201.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,791,584, issued to the same inventor of present application, is disclosed to resolve the problem associated with fitting computer-stored images of spectacle frames to scalable human faces, making it easier to fit frames to faces via the use of stored images in computers. Said patent involves the major steps below:
(a) Provide the image of a spectacle frame (without the frame legs) to the memory of a computer, and determine the mid point of the two lenses as existed on the spectacle frames;
(b) Determine the display ratio of the frame, based upon the real size information of the frame being shown on the computer display;
(c) Input the front image of a consumer and display the facial image on the computer;
(d) Provide a pair of marking points on the computer monitor corresponding to those of human pupils;
(e) Use regular input devices, such as a computer mouse, to move said pair of marking points towards the mid point of the two lenses until their coincide; measure the distance between the two pupils on the facial image and record said distance into computer, as the pupil distance for computer stored facial image;
(f) Enter the real pupil distance as measured on the consumer's face into computer; determine the ratio of the distance as between the two pupils on the facial image and the real distance on the consumer's face;
(g) Adjust the relative size of facial image to the size of the spectacle frame, so that the facial image and spectacle frame image will be shown on the computer display unit according to the proper scale;
(h) Operate the computer to superimpose the spectacle frame image on the facial image and make adjustment until the mid point of the two pupils on the facial image overlaps with the mid point of the two lenses on the spectacle frame.
Note that in steps (a) and (b), various sizes and shapes of spectacle frames have been pre-loaded into computer databases, having their images stored in electronic memory devices of a computer for access.